Sir, – I was interested in your story, GPs have more patients than there are people (October 29) based on information uncovered by Liz Smith MSP, that there are apparently nearly 240,000 more people registered for GP surgeries in Scotland than there are people in Scotland.
This is very similar to the story that emerged about five years ago whereby Scottish dental surgeries were getting paid £6 million a year for patients who were either registered at multiple practices, living abroad or dead.
Given that NHS resources are allocated to GP practices on the basis of how many registered patients they have, do we know the unnecessary cost incurred by this massive over-registration of patients?
The story from five years ago made mewonder just how much oversight our Scottish Government has inour health service, given the proportion ofour budget that goes to this?
The answer seems to be not very much.
I trust Ms Smith will dig a little deeper into this.
Victor Clements. Mamie’s Cottage, Aberfeldy.
Hidden crisisin North Sea
Sir, – It was good to note Gordon Deucharsof GA Engineeringhighlight the effect of the job losses throughout the North Sea oil industry (October 28).
Since the start of the downturn, apart from a few announcements, the silence from Scottish and UK Governments has been deafening.
More than 65,000 jobs, and rising daily, have been lost already.
This is not just an Aberdeen problem, but a Scottish and UK one with job cuts all over thecountry.
Highly-skilled workers will be lost, never to return, as experience tells.
We were told in 2012 that it was going to be boom time for the next five years at least andthe forecasters arenow predicting the upturn will start in 2017.
Well if their forecasts are anything to go by, I don’t hold out much hope for the future.
Grahame Walker. 61 Tweed Crescent Dundee.
Cut number of Scots councils
Sir,- Dundee CityCouncil needs to make £28 million of cuts toits budget.
It now seems to be a yearly debate onhow these savings canbe made and whichsections of the community should be hit.
The elderly, thevulnerable or maybe the children?
Now I would never claim to have the financial acumen required to be a local councillor, however, would it not be an idea to merge some of the local authorities?
Scotland does not need 32 councils.
Let’s go for 10 councils, each with half-a-million people.
Think of all the savings with the reduced number of chief executives across the country.
This sounds like apossible option but strange how it is never brought up in city halls.
Steven Lyall. 17 Rossie Avenue, Dundee.
Celtic myth of Braveheart
Sir, – The British Museum’s latest show, Celts: Art and Identity, will not please Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists or, for that matter, Celtic fantasizers fromScandinavia to Turkey.
A brilliant chronological display follows the various tribal identities that created the idea of the Celts but they turn out to have been largely a figment of the European imagination.
The first mention of them is in Greek writings around 450 BC when they were vaguely referred to as the inhabitants of those parts of Europe beyond the Mediterranean coast.
But the Romans didn’t notice them, referring to local undesirables as Gauls, and they disappear for 2,000 yearsuntil rediscovered by scribblers in the late Renaissance.
The myth was then sustained by a mix of wishful thinking andoutright fraud, from James Macpherson’s imaginary Celtic bard Ossian to Mel Gibson’s absurd Braveheart.
Rev Dr John Cameron. 10 Howard Place, St Andrews.
Tariff cuts harm industry
Sir, – The renewable energy industry inScotland, as throughout the whole of the UK, is being adversely affected by the bringing forward of the ending of the feed-in-tariff.
A number of proposals to install renewable energy locally, which were in the early stages of planning, have already been abandoned andothers cut back. These cutbacks have four effects, three locally.
Firstly, increasing unemployment as staff are laid off. Some firms may well have to close down.
Secondly, where fitting solar panels on social housing is concerned, the opportunity to cut the fuel bills of tenants, who may well be in hard-to-heat homes. These savings could well have been in the region of £200 to £300 pounds per annum, taking some out of fuel poverty.
The third local adverse effect will be to community groups, especially those who run halls, and to small and medium-sized businesses, including farms, who are thinking of installing small-scale renewables, solar, wind or hydro, to help with their balance sheets.
The fourth adverse effect will be to slow down the cutting back of greenhouse gases and so aggravate climate change. This, of course, is an international affair which must be urgently addressed.
Ironically, these cut backs come at a time when the Government is encouraging large electrical power generation firms, with huge financial subsidies, to burn more wood chip as a fuel.
This is proving to be more dangerous than coal by pumping even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Walter Attwood. 7 James Street, Whins of Milton, Stirling.
Unfairness of voting system
Sir,- Your correspondent Allan MacDougall criticised the Westminster first-past-the-post system as being unfair to voters.
However, he did not go on to mention that in the General Election of May 2015, the SNP only got 50% of Scottish votes but now sit with 98% of Scottish MPs in the House of Commons.
Now that is what I would call a really unfair electoral result.
I am sure you would agree Allan?
Gus Logan. 2 York Road, North Berwick.
Pylon on the misery
Sir, – Aren’t politics wonderful?
Not so long ago we were told in Scotland that the only way to get the power to where it was needed was to build the tall pylons which now are a blot on the landscape.
We were told that underground cabling was no use by virtue of the heat generated by this method.
How about a sub-sea cable then?
Behave yourselves said the people on high, just get the pylons up and after a while you won’t even notice them.
Then David Cameron found himself in Iceland and is said to be considering importing electricity from there, and how is this going to be supplied? By a sub-sea cable.
You couldn’t make it up.
J.R. Smith. 44 Glamis Road, Kirriemuir.
Scotland’s pocket money
Sir, – Your correspondent Ian Lakin (October 31) correctly pointed out that tax credits had ballooned out of control since their introduction by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown.
However, Mr Lakin failed to mention that the purpose of the exercise was to redistribute wealth within an unequal society.
He also missed the point that credits usually rise in response to a drop in levels of household income.
He contends that the United Kingdom hascreated more jobsthan the rest of theEuropean Union put together but also failsto concede that the majority of them were low-paid jobs.
There are alsothousands of people like two of my grandsons who took up self employment rather than be unemployed, who have found that their level of working income was such that they qualified for a top-up from the benefitsystem.
Again, this is notbeneficial to the growth of the economy.
However, Mr Lakin reserved his finalattack for the Scottish Government, claiming that it had neglectedour economic welfare in the pursuit of independence.
But he does notseem to appreciate thatScotland’s budget is merely akin to a pocket money allowance determined by the Westminster Government.
In this respect, Mr Lakin should knowthat according to theUK Treasury’s owncalculations, the Scottish economy pays moreinto the UK pot than it receives in the form ofits budget, calculated using the BarnettFormula.
Allan MacDougall. 37 Forth Park, Bridge of Allan.
Time to name the fallen?
Sir, – I have visited many war memorials in Britain, France andBelgium and always take time to read the men’s names.
I have always feltsad that names were never inscribed on the Law memorial in Dundee.
It would seem fitting, during these centenary commemoration years, that some thought should be given tofinding a public place where all the names of the Dundee fallen could be seen.
I appreciate there is a paper roll of honour for the fallen in the libraryin Dundee and all the names can also be found online.
However, this is not the same as being ableto read all the namesin a public place ashappens in other towns and villages around the UK and Europe.
I wonder what other readers think?
Christine Johnston. 8 Stanley Road, Dundee.